


To Some Distant Century

by thoughtful_constellations



Category: Torchwood
Genre: (but not so many you won't understand if you haven't listened to them), Angst, Children of Earth Compliant, Children of Earth Fix-It, M/M, death mentions, mild descriptions of nightmares and depressive behavior, references to Big Finish Audio Dramas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 15:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17531666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtful_constellations/pseuds/thoughtful_constellations
Summary: Some time after the tragic events of Children of Earth, Ianto Jones is resurrected. However, the conditions of his awakening are less than desirable, and he has no idea how to find Jack.





	1. Breathing

Lights flicked on in a line down the dark hallway lined in black marble and rows of doors. Each one made a resounding snap that echoed all the way back, breaking the undisturbed atmosphere and casting an unnatural sense of life over the room. 

Evans’ heels clicked almost as loudly as she stepped in precise, brisk steps past the lines of tags, scanning each crisp, typed letter. The two agents with her, dressed neatly in black, followed, heavy steps in sync, a hovercart trailing behind them. She stopped at the end of the hall, facing a door that was on the far left of this last hallway of the last level of the basement of the very first facility implemented for storage all those years ago.

“001,” read the card above the handle. It had been here for so long there wasn’t even a screen to display the numbers, let alone a handprint scan. 

Evans pulled an ID card from her pocket (it had hardly been used since she’d received it, unnecessary due to the chip in her forearm), and swiped it along the indent in the door. She took a step back as the door gave a hiss and popped out of its frame. She moved to the side, letting the taller of the agents, Collins, pull it open, ignoring the old, chilling scent of death that surrounded the mist coming from the rectangular chamber inside. They pulled out the platform that held the corpse, sliding it onto the cart and drawing the sheet back. Evans reviewed the flat, holographic device in her hand and glanced over the body for any problems, eyes at last coming to rest on the subject’s face. 

Ianto Jones, one of the many “heroes” of Torchwood. Reduced to a shell lying in a storage facility, as they all would be one way or another. She’d seen more than her fill of morgues for it to bother her. He was just another operative; although, if she considered it, she did wonder over the commendations the reputable Jack Harkness had left on his files. After all, he’d only been a butler. 

Well. She’d soon find out.

She tapped a couple of commands onto the hologram, looked it over, and deactivated the screen.

“Everything seems to be in order. Let’s go,” she commanded, turning on her heel and walking back down the hall, leaving them to catch up to her. 

* * *

“Signs vitalizing. Pulse stable. Brain activity coming online.”

Flashes of light pounding on the border of consciousness. A commotion.

Green-gloved fingers mapping out the valleys of his body, poking and prodding and sticking needles. 

“Mr. Jones. Can you hear me?” 

It was cold. Colder than he’d ever been. He thought he could feel familiar warm hands touching his face, his neck, lips pressing to his. His lungs felt tight. It was _so_ cold--he wondered if it was snowing. He’d have to get to the car early and defrost the windshield before they went out.

“Ianto.”

That was probably Jack, coming to ask him what the temperature was outside. Jack never bothered to check himself, for whatever reason; Ianto suspected he just wanted excuses to start a conversation. He didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to contribute to something other than cleaning. 

There was indeed a hand on his face, but it was plastic, large, unfamiliar. It felt wrong. He opened his eyes, ready to locate the offending hand and protest, but the light above him was blinding. He gasped and shut them again, blinking rapidly, the world going vertigo. There was too much feedback rushing towards him; all he got were colors, bits of sound fading in and out, harsh smells of chemicals. He screwed his eyes up tight.

“There you go, you're alright. Take a minute to let your brain adjust,” said a voice above him in calming, smooth tones.

Ianto breathed deeply, in and out, trying to fight down nausea. Whatever surface he was lying on was cold and hard, and he gripped it so tightly it hurt. He felt a buzzing in his fingertips. As he cleared his head, he realized his entire body was buzzing, humming, as though the very atoms in the top layer of his skin were vibrating in place.

Gradually, he lifted his eyelids. A young man stood above him, peering down through odd, square glasses and smiling reassuringly. Bright lights framed the outline of his head. He was dressed in all white and had a bizarre haircut Ianto had never seen before, shaved in circular patterns. 

“What’s going on?” Ianto rasped, feeling as though he’d gone weeks without talking.

“You’re in the hospital--but don’t worry, you’re fine.” The hand, which belonged to the doctor, gave him a pat and pulled away from his face. “Should be better than fine,” the man said to himself, taking a step back.

Ianto blinked in the light. Hospital? But why? He had just been…with Jack. In a room full of gas. Confronting the 456.

Everything came rushing back to him at once; he jerked up onto his elbows--and promptly fell back again when they wobbled under him. 

“Is Jack okay?” He demanded. “Where is he? What,” a deep, strained breath, “what happened to the children?”

“Heartbeat rising,” said a voice in the back of the room, accompanied by a series of beeps that he hadn’t noticed before now.

“Hey, hey,” the doctor said in a low voice, as though calming a toddler. “Stay calm, Mr. Jones. Jack is perfectly well. The whole thing is over; the Earth was saved, there’s nothing you need to worry about.”

“How long have I been out--how am I even alive? I was dying, Jack was dying, I--” He saw the doctor glance towards the front of the room. As if Ianto wouldn’t notice. He followed his gaze to a woman standing near the door, dressed in a black pantsuit. She shook her head ever so slightly, surveying them from the corner of her deep brown eyes.

“You’ve...been out for a while--but hey! You’re not dead now, are you?” He deflected the question with a bubbly smile. “We’re going to have to keep you here for a while, run some tests, make sure everything’s working--and then you’ll be briefed on the situation. That sound okay to you?”

Ianto got the feeling it didn’t matter how he felt. Everything was _wrong_. 

“Let’s see how you do sitting up, shall we?” The doctor placed a hand somewhere behind his line of sight, and the surface he was lying on began to move, pushing him upwards into a sitting position.

“Do you think you can go the rest of the way?” 

Ianto glanced at him furtively and pushed himself forwards, feeling sheepish when it took more effort than he anticipated. His arms tingled where he exerted pressure, the vibrating becoming more intense. 

“What is that? Feels like bees buzzing under my skin…” He glanced around as he spoke. There were several doctors in the room, maybe nurses. It was hard to tell; their uniforms were unfamiliar to him. He was beginning to doubt that this was a hospital at all. They were observing him, stares unwavering except to check monitors and equipment in front of them. 

“Hm, yes, they take a while to really set in before they start functioning adequately. Once they do, you’ll feel better than you ever have.” He was taking Ianto’s hand, kneading into his elbow and up along his bicep, as though testing the muscle.

“...They?” 

“The nanogenes. They’re small robots that--”

“Yeah, I know what they are,” he interrupted. “...I thought they were all destroyed after that incident in the 1940s; how do you lot have them?” 

Ianto remembered Jack talking him about them one night, seated on the sofa in Ianto’s flat. They’d been drinking, leaning against each other watching reruns of old shows on tv after a long and successful day of saving the world. It was moments like those, when Jack was in peaceful, happy moods, that were the most intimate; when he shared details about his past rather than dancing around them or shrugging them off. 

“We have contacts for everything,” the doctor answered.

“What kind of hospital is this? It was just my lungs that got damaged, why are they all over my body? Aren’t they dangerous?”

“Your body was rendered unintact by circumstances which I am not allowed to relay to you at this time.” What, was he reciting a contract? “No need to stress, though, we’ve managed to reprogram them so they only recognize you as a host for now. You won’t have to bother with them once you’ve been healed completely.”

Ianto opened his mouth, brimming with questions, but the man continued, changing the subject.

“Now, let’s see if we can get you standing, hm?” 

Another doctor came to his left, and they helped ease him onto his feet. The floor was cold, like everything else in this strangely wide room. He wished he had more covering him. It took a lot of effort to keep himself upright, blood rushing to his head, knees wobbling, but he gripped the doctors’ forearms until he could do it on his own. His legs felt as though he’d been sitting in an airplane for ages, but ten times worse. 

“Take a step forward,” said the second doctor, putting her hand under his forearm. He did as she said; the pain began to subside gradually, until he was walking in circles on his own, stretching his arms out as though he’d woken from a long nap--which, he supposed he had.

“So,” he put his hands on his hips, rocking back and forth on his feet, “I’m alive, and my walk’s caught up to my talk.” He immediately regretted the joke and swallowed his mental cringing over the rhyme. “Can I see Jack now?”

The doctor made a reluctant, disaffirming hum. “We have more tests for you, I’m afraid. Fitness, cognitive abilities,” he checked over a thin rectangular device, either glass or holographic (Ianto couldn’t quite tell), “marksmanship.” Ianto had reached the conclusion by now that this was definitely not a hospital but reasoned that fighting his way out wouldn’t lead anywhere. He resolved that his only option was to comply, gather information, and stay alive. 

“Making sure I’m ready for MI6, huh?” He joked. 

They stared at him blankly. 

Tough crowd. “Right. Okay. Testing.” 

“...If you’ll follow Ms. Evans,” he said, gesturing towards the intimidatingly well-dressed woman at the door. She regarded him emotionlessly. “She’ll take you to get changed and then you’ll begin.”

“Thank you, Doctor Tan,” Evans said.

She pivoted on one of her bright red heels and exited the room, the door sliding open for her automatically. _Just like Star Trek,_ Ianto thought. _How unnecessarily extravagant for an operating room_.

He trailed behind Evans, who didn’t even spare a glance back to check if he was with her. Her thick, shoulder length, brunette hair bounced as she walked. 

The halls were devoid of people and mostly blank, save for other doorways, all closed. It gave him a bit of a Torchwood One feel, reminded him of the lower wings they kept for government officials that visited; mostly offices and boring cream walls and unmarked doors. Yvonne had never wanted them poking their noses around in the real Torchwood, bumbling around and screwing things up. It was a stark contrast to Jack, whose idea of secrecy was more lax than he liked to pretend (they had a bloody tourists’ lift, for Christ’s sake). Ianto had to admit, it was endearing as much as it was difficult to remedy every single secrecy issue with retcon.

Ianto’s heart sank as he thought of the Hub--or lack of. He wondered where they’d move base to, how long it would take to restaff. He hated the idea of replacing Owen and Tosh as much as Jack and Gwen did. There were some roles that just couldn’t be filled, at least not in the way that had become comfortable to them. That had made the Hub home. Still, it was apparent that their team was lacking in skill by how easily they'd been broken apart, and recruitment was something they'd just have to face. 

He wanted to get out of here so he could see Jack.

Lost in thought, he nearly bumped into Evans as she came to an abrupt stop. They were standing in front of a door that was identical to every other in this hall, with a glass panel on the wall beside it. She wordlessly placed her palm flat onto the glass, and the door swiped open. 

They entered into a windowless room of grey concrete, a set of lockers to their left and exercise equipment to their right, all of them with holographic interfaces that glowed and pulsed softly. It stretched back into what Ianto recognized as a shooting range. 

Evans directed his attention to the concrete benches by the lockers, where a pile of black cloth sat in a neat, folded pile. “Change into these.”

She stepped over to the fitness equipment and began interacting with the interfaces, the blue light of them casting gentle shapes over her bronze cheekbones. Ianto looked at her, then back to the clothes. Did she want him to change right here, in front of her? He glanced at her again. She was ignoring him. 

He shrugged inwardly and lifted the hospital gown over his head. If Jack was in this position, he thought, he'd be getting a kick out of it, would probably be flirting with Evans. Ianto pulled on the clothes. He had more decency than that.

The style of the long sleeved shirt and trousers was odd; they were tighter than what he was used to and fit strangely. The material was slick, air or water resistant. Both the shirt and trousers were lined with pockets of varying sizes, some with zips and others more hidden. 

He looked up when he was finished, and saw that Evans was facing him, passively regarding him. 

“What kind of clothes are these?”

“They're made for Special Ops. They've been designed for quick and efficient movement.”

“Special Ops?”

Ignoring the question, she opened the holographic tablet in her hands and looked it over.

“I need you to spend 10 minutes on each of these. They will be monitoring your progress. I will be alerted when you finish. If you don't know how to use one, press the question mark at the corner of the screen.” 

He frowned. “I _know_ how to use an elliptical--”

“Good for you. Get on with it then.” She turned on her heel and clicked out of the room.

Ianto huffed at her blunt articulation and reluctantly faced the machines. He approached the elliptical and, placing a foot onto one of the platforms, hoisted himself up. A voice sprang out of nowhere, nearly startling him onto the floor.

“Please select a time limit!” Said a cheery, male voice emanating from all around him. He noticed that it was American, different from the varying dialects that Evans and the doctors possessed. Something about its tone was familiar to him; he brushed the feeling off, attributing it to nerves. Several settings popped up in front of him, composed of countless pricks of light. He hesitated before hovering his index finger over one of the boxes. 

He’d only interacted with a holographic interface twice: once at Cardiff, in the archives, and another time at Torchwood One. He’d been running errands in Security when Kieran Frost, the department head, had called Ianto over to ask him to try his hand with an odd-looking type of control panel they’d confiscated from a crashed alien vessel. No one in the department could disable it, and so it had sat on the man’s desk flashing symbols in an unknown language and emitting a high-pitched whine (one of the interns had wrapped a sweater around it, which did little to muffle the alarm) while several of the officers stood around it, making suggestions that proved ineffective. Eventually, they’d swiped through so many screens an extra panel had popped out of it and illuminated the entire room with a map of some section of space, multicolored planets appearing over desks and hanging suspended in the air. They couldn’t manage to disable the map, but at least the noise had stopped. Kieran had covered the whole thing with the sweater to keep the projection from escaping and shoved it under his desk, sending everyone back to work and disgruntledly claiming he’d have someone from engineering dismantle it later.

Ianto brushed off the flashbacks before the nostalgia distracted him. 

“Begin!” The machine chirped.

Ianto went from machine to machine, taking time to catch his breath between each session. When he started, he felt more out of shape than he remembered; strangely enough, though, the exercise seemed to get easier the longer he went for. His body moved faster, muscles hardly exhibiting strain, and the buzzing he’d felt earlier returned to the areas that should have been aching.

He’d just finished catching his breath after the last exercise when the door swiped open and Evans entered the room. Wordlessly, she escorted him back to the shooting range, keying a code into a set of weapons lockers to the side and pulling out a handgun. She observed as he shot each target, tapping into her tablet after each round, likely checking him for accuracy. His aim was nearly perfect, in his own opinion; it was a skill he’d spent hours perfecting at the Hub, especially on nights when he felt that trying to sleep would be pointless. He would feed all of his restless energy into practicing keeping his arm steady against the kickback until he could fire several bullets in rapid succession and still maintain his precision.

Evans didn’t make any remarks on his shooting--Ianto wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. When his gun was empty, he set it on the counter before him and crossed his arms, raising his eyebrows at her. 

“So?”

“Your shooting’s efficient. I presume you learned at Torchwood One?” 

Ianto blinked. They knew about Torchwood? That just furthered his suspicion that he wasn’t in a hospital.

“For the most part, yes, but I improved when I came to Cardiff.”

She hummed a thoughtful note, lips pursed, and snapped her tablet shut. 

“All of your physical tests have checked out--which means the nanogenes are functioning as we thought they would.”

“Can you please tell me what's going on now?” Ianto said, tone bitingly impatient. He was tired of them keeping him in the dark, treating him like a test subject. He was starting to think this might be a Unit facility, all of these unfeeling drones of employees and government secrecy. He'd thought Jack would be here by now to get him out, but the longer he stayed, the more anxious he got.

A red-painted nail tapped absently against the metal siding in her hands. “We still have to measure your mental abilities before you're briefed on your situation.”

Desperation gripped his words, “Please, just tell me--are my friends alright? Gwen and Rhys?” He knew not to worry too much about Jack, but they’d left Gwen alone in that warehouse and he hated to think about what might have happened if Unit had ignored her threats to broadcast their recordings and decided to shoot her anyway. It was driving him crazy not to know what was going on outside of this place. What if the only reason they hadn’t gotten him out of here yet was that one of them was dead? 

 

Evans’ look was unreadable to him; he may have imagined it, but he thought he saw her resolve break the slightest bit.

“They’re fine,” she said softly. “Now please,” the hard edge shifted its way back into her voice, “follow me.”

Ianto didn’t have much choice but to trust her and try to keep up as she led him through another maze of doors and hallways, into a smaller room with a single desk set in the center. There was a tiny, round projection device mounted into the surface and a chair that, thankfully, looked to be more comfortable than he remembered from his school years. Evans waved her hand towards the desk. 

“Most of the tests we put you through will be multiple choice, and the hologram will direct you through each one. You won’t be timed, so go at your own pace.” And just like that, she was gone again.

Gingerly taking a seat in the padded chair, Ianto cast a wary glance at the holographic platform. What was up with these people and holograms? The last Unit facility he'd been in hadn't been near as technologically advanced as this. Maybe he'd been taken by the 456--was on their ship while they masqueraded as humans. But he wasn't a child, and they'd made it more than clear that that was what they were interested in.

He prodded the device on the table, wondering how to turn it on. Multiple choice, eh? He'd never been much good at those--short answer had always come more easily to him. He supposed it was better than being put through a simulation, like the nightmare-inducing descriptions of the Giant’s Drink in _Ender’s Game_. He'd read that book when he was twelve, and although there wasn't much about it that he could remember, those scenes had freaked him out as a child. 

A beam of light shot out of the triangular, metal device, blossoming into a wide display. If not for the armrests, Ianto would have fallen out of the chair in surprise. A noise, reminiscent of the THX opening (and nearly as loud), sounded as the beams of light formed into a welcome screen. The lights in the room dimmed, and he whipped his head around, trying to find the person controlling the light switch before remembering he was alone. 

“Welcome, _Ianto Jones_ ,” a suave, deep voice recited from out of the speakers. It had the same voice as the interfaces of the workout machines, and the familiarity of hearing his name in that tone gave him an odd feeling--but there was no way...

“These tests are designed to gauge the moral and intellectual integrity of new recruitments. Please answer each question as honestly as possible, and note that although there are no wrong answers, your choices, along with a face-to-face evaluation, will be taken into account when judging your capability to handle this job.”

The more he heard it talk, the more familiar it sounded. It was then that it hit him.

What the _bloody_ hell was Jack Harkness’ voice doing in an automated testing system? And why was it _here_?

“When you’ve selected an answer, hit the arrow at the corner of the screen to proceed.” Ianto was so shocked he could hardly process the words--although, as it began to set in, it just made sense that of all the people who could have been coming from this computer, it was Jack. Weird things like this always revolved around Jack. At least it ruled out the possibility of Ianto being in any immediate danger from this facility, right?

The screen lit up with a series of questions depicting several different situations, each with a profound moral dilemma and increasingly cryptic answer choices. It was startling how similar they were to the sorts of challenges he faced every day at Torchwood, and the second one even mentioned aliens (a fact that would have surprised him earlier, but at this point just seemed like a long time coming). He answered two, then stopped and blinked, fixing the screen with a deadpan that went completely unappreciated by the pulsing blue particles.

"I cannot believe they're giving me a fucking glorified _personality test_. This is ridiculous!"

He whizzed through the rest of the questions, feeling increasingly absurd and half expecting them to ask what his favorite color was or ask him to solve the trolley problem. He didn’t even see why he had to take this test--it wasn’t as though he was being recruited to whatever job the test was designed for.

“Test complete! Have a great day, _Mr. Jones_.” Was he imagining the cheeky lilt to Jack’s--the computer’s--words? Probably not.

The door swiped open almost the second the hologram blipped off, and Ianto jerked, hitting his knee on the table. He flushed, hoping Evans hadn’t seen. This place was getting to him, making him jumpy.

He looked up at her expectantly. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me; please, can I see my friends now?”

“We’ve told you several times, Mr. Jones, that that isn’t a possibility at the moment--”

“Yeah, well you haven’t told me why, have you! I’m sick of all of this...waiting around, not knowing what the hell is going on. I’m Torchwood, I have the clearance, if you’d just contact my boss I’m sure he’d tell you off just for keeping me so long without reporting to him!” He took a breath, trying to compose himself. 

Evans was glaring down at him. “I’m here to take you to be briefed,” she said tersely, “if you’d just be patient. Everything is going to be made clear to you--and to be honest, you’re probably not going to like it, but there’s nothing either of us--or Captain Harkness, for that matter--can do about it.”

She turned from the room, leaving Ianto to sit and stare at the open door. 

“Fuck,” he sighed.

He stood, pushing the chair out, and followed before the automatic timer could shut it. 

Trailing wordlessly behind her, he followed her down the hall and into a lift. 

“Level?” Said Computer Jack’s voice from within the walls of the lift. That was really starting to weird him out.

“One hundred forty-two.”

“Going _up_ ,” it insinuated.

Evans sighed. “We seriously need to get that taken care of. It unsettles our guests.”

“...Why exactly does it have J--”

The lift jerked, springing to motion more quickly than Ianto expected; his stomach dropped and he gripped the spotless silver railing beside him.

Glowing blue numbers ticked upwards on a display near the door, and Jack’s voice announced every tenth floor--as well as the sixty-ninth, he noted, with more glee than you’d expect from an automated lift. Ianto rolled his eyes in exasperation.

They eased to a stop and the doors swiped open with a _ping_. The hall beyond was composed of a dark grey marble that covered the floors and walls, catching the light from the fluorescent beams overhead and transforming them into a foreboding ambiance that settled over the space. There were broad windows along the walls that may have lightened the mood if they weren’t covered by dark screens that obstructed the view outside. 

He took a tentative step out of the lift, glancing at the thin, blue stripes of light that were cut into the marble, stretching back to the door at the end of the hall and giving a futuristic tint to the interior design. 

Evans walked past him and strode to the end of the hall, passing her arm over a scanner by the door. She looked to him expectantly as the door opened; he shook himself from where he stood staring and hurried to enter. 

The room he came into was so reminiscent of Yvonne Hartman’s old office he was almost disconcerted when he saw that it was not her sitting at the desk. The floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the wall were darkened--a common theme here, it seemed--although there were no curtains visible. He realized that they’d probably covered all of the windows to keep him from guessing his location. 

At the sleek, organized desk sat a tall woman, staring analytically at him through a pair of round, gold-tinted glasses. She set down the pen she was holding, gave them both a broad, friendly smile and brushed a strand of her long, curled hair behind her ear. 

“Ianto Jones,” she said musingly, her voice like glass. “Take a seat. Both of you.” She gestured to the leather chairs in front of her desk. Ianto lowered himself into the one on the right, eyes flicking across her desk to an alien-looking device, neatly stacked papers and manila folders, a couple of picture frames whose backs were turned to him, and a miniature, silvery replica of Venus de Milo, haloed in the light from her desk lamp.

He glanced back to her, eyebrows furrowed anxiously. The way she stared at him made him feel like a schoolchild sent to the headmistress’s office for a stern admonition and a call home. He shifted uncomfortably, leather creaking. The automatic door behind them shut with a suctioned _click._

She clasped her dark hands together, forearms resting on the desk. A couple of rings on her fingers clinked against each other. “So, Mr. Jones!” Another smile, all-knowing and secretive. 

She took an anticipatory, self-satisfied breath.

“Welcome to Torchwood.”


	2. Realizations

Ianto's stomach sank to the floor. 

“What?”

She bowed her head slightly, as though she’d expected this reaction from him, and reached a hand under her desk. The windows behind her lightened seemingly of their own accord, to reveal...Cardiff? He got to his feet in a dazed rush, going to the window.

It _was_ Cardiff, but certainly not the Cardiff he remembered. The buildings were taller, a few of them he’d never seen before, and there were small objects flitting around a couple of them; he was too far away to tell what they were, exactly. 

It was then that he glanced down, and his fingertips pressed against the glass in shock. 

“The fountain!” He croaked. They were far, far above Roald Dahl Plass, and the tiny fountain seemed _miniscule_ compared to their height; smaller, even, than it had looked from any rooftop he’d been on. That meant whatever building they were in must be… right behind it. How long had he been out that they’d had time to build this skyscraper right behind the fountain?

...The fountain, which had been blown up along with the Plass and the Hub.

Ianto whirled around, feeling like his world was spinning. 

“What,” he calmed his tone, hearing the crack in his voice, “what is going on? That fountain,” he pointed a hand to the window, “was a _crater_ not too long ago.” 

The woman at the desk had swiveled in her chair to watch him flit about the windows in confusion, and her legs were crossed elegantly. “I know you must be terribly confused, but if you’ll please sit back down, I _promise_ I will explain. I’d hate for you to take this standing up.” She glanced at him pityingly and pivoted her chair back around.

Ianto glanced helplessly from her to the window, to her, letting his hand slip from the glass. He’d left a handprint, he noticed regretfully, pitying whoever had the job of keeping the windows clean.

He shuffled back to his seat and dropped into it, laying his hands on his knees and blinking. Evans was watching him, and he swore there was amusement teeming in her eyes.

“First of all, let me introduce myself,” the dark-haired woman said. “Isabelle Smith, Director of Torchwood Cardiff.” She held a hand out, a techy-looking golden circlet gleaming on her wrist.

Ianto took her hand, his handshake a bit weaker than usual. “Nice to meet you..?” He said, unsure of the fact.

The cryptic smile on her face, ever-present, did not waver.

“Do you remember what happened in Thames House?” She asked softly.

“I was choking. Jack was there, trying to negotiate with the 456.” He met her eyes. “They left, then?”

She nodded slowly. “You died.”

Ianto frowned, looking at his hands. “Doesn’t feel like it.” Even as he spoke, however, he could feel the buzzing under his skin. It was like breathing--out of his mind until he was reminded of its presence. Anxiety set in as he began piecing things together.

“That would be the nanogenes. Our scientists re-engineered them to reanimate your lungs and all of the functions your body stopped performing when you stopped breathing. Impossible, had you been buried, but with Torchwood’s infallible cryogenics process…Well, you can see the results.”

Ianto tried to wet his lips, but his mouth was dry. He flicked his eyes to the window, heart sinking. “What year is it,” he asked, dreading her answer.

“2134.”

Ianto made a distressed, acquiescent hum. “Fine,” he said under his breath, “wonderful.” He drew his head up. “Why me?” 

“Excuse me?”

“Why me? Why not Gwen, or Tosh--the _useful_ members of our team?” The ‘real’ members. He’d only moved up, in the end, because of Tosh and Owen, at a cost he hadn’t asked for, let alone _wanted_.

“The bodies of Agent Sato and Doctor Harper were lost in the explosion, along with all of the previous members of Torchwood. An irreplaceable loss, of course. We chose you as our first real resurrection rather than Agent Cooper, because, well…”

“I’m expendable. Gwen was too important to try first.”

He could tell by the look in her eyes that he was right. “You aren't any less of an agent, you were just lower than her in rank.” 

Ianto snorted. Rank hadn't mattered to Jack. They were never soldiers, they were a team. “‘Course.” 

He thought for a moment. “You can bring people back to life.”

“With great expense. You've got a lot of money riding on your head, Mr. Jones.”

He ignored the implications of that statement. “You can bring people _back to life_ , and you used it to reanimate a butler? People would kill for this ability--pardon the pun. You could use it for good, or even make money off of it!”

“Like how you used the Resurrection Gauntlet to let people speak to their dead grannies one last time?” By him, she meant his team.

“Touché.”

“We are using it for good. We've brought back one of the best agents Torchwood ever had.”

Ianto let out a harsh laugh. “I'm a _tea-boy!_ They only keep me around because I’m the only one who knows how to feed the bloody pterodactyl!”

She looked at him slyly. “You've just woken up. You haven't had a chance to read your files. I'm sure you know what lovely reviews Yvonne Hartman left on them, but it's nothing compared to the talking-up Jack Harkness gave you.”

“Biased,” Ianto muttered.

“You may not think much of yourself, Jones, but I have a strong feeling that I’ve made a wise investment in bringing you back.”

He just shook his head slowly, contemplating. 

“So,” he said, after a couple of minutes of silence, “If you’re the Director, where’s Jack? He must’ve stuck around here; I heard his voice in the AI.”

Smith shared a look with Evans. “...We don’t know.”

“Really? You’re going to wake me up after 125 years and not tell me where my only living friend is?”

“No, really. He’s orchestrated the moves of Torchwood for close to a century after you died, but government’s changed. The monarchy’s completely gone--we still have ties to the government, but our funding’s gone. We’re freelance. New rules, new protocols we have to follow. Jack hates the bureaucracy of it all; he dropped off the map eight years ago. He still checks in with me, I report directly to him, but somehow he’s managed to shake our tracking. Evans thinks he’s still in Britain, I think he’s gone off-planet--we have a bit of a bet running to see where he’s spotted first.” She gave a playful smirk in Evans’ direction. “Until he turns up to take over, I’m running the show.”

Eight years...Ianto frowned. How would he ever get to Jack if Torchwood didn’t even know where he was? He was stuck here, alone, in a world he knew nothing about. He took a deep breath, trying not to let the weight of his situation crush him.

“Where does that leave me?”

She shifted. “Well, you see…Torchwood owns the nanogenes keeping you alive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And when you died, Torchwood took ownership of your body.”

“Uh-huh.” He knew where she was going with this.

“Technically, Torchwood already owned you, but at this point, you can’t just walk out with the expectation of being retconned.”

“Of course not. That would be rude,” he agreed sardonically. 

“Bottom line: you’ll continue working for us, and if you decide to quit, or if you’re insubordinate, or if we feel that you aren’t performing to the benefit of this organization--”

“You’ll ‘deactivate’ me, yeah?”

“Precisely.”

“Doesn’t this violate my rights? I’m a human being,” he said, agitated. “I have every right to leave with my life as anyone else working here!” Not only did he hate the idea of working for a Torchwood that wasn’t Jack, he didn’t want to be kept here against his will. Smith had made it clear that the only control he had over his life was the choice to die--he realized, with some bitter sense of irony, that his problems were diametric to Jack’s.

Though, even if he was given a choice, would he really leave? What did he have outside of Torchwood? Torchwood had always owned him--just more literally now, it seemed.

“You were pronounced dead--so no, you aren’t technically a human being.”

Ianto just stared at her in disbelief, mouth hanging open in protest.

“If you appeal to anyone, we’ll have you deactivated immediately.” The smile that was once welcoming had become sinister.

“Does Jack know about this?” He asked lowly.

“What?”

“Jack would _never_ authorize this.”

“Yes, well. His last check-in was…Do you recall, Kyda?”

“A year and a half ago, ma'am,” Evans said.

“You see? And his calls have been spaced further and further apart, lately. I've done too much good for him to worry.”

“This is hardly--”

“Ianto, listen. I'll give you time to think it over. You'll be given a very nice flat nearby, you'll still get paid and have off time--your job will hardly be different from what you left behind! You'll get used to it.”

“I can hardly see that happening. You've plucked me from my timeline, my own _life_ , and you expect me to go along like nothing's happened? My friends are dead—my sister, her children, long gone, I…” He trailed off, voice closing up.

“Like I said, I've read your files. You're flexible. You'll adapt.” She drew her attention to her desk, giving it two taps. A built-in screen on the tabletop came to life. “Now,” she said, looking back at them over her glasses, “Evans will be orchestrating your assimilation into this job and the culture of the area. You will report to her, and she will be in charge of your training and distributing your missions to you.” 

She addressed Evans directly, “I've got another meeting in 5 minutes; take him to get settled in, would you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Evans stood, pushing her chair out. “With me, Jones.”

He directed a glare at Smith as he got up. This wasn't over with. He'd find Jack, somehow.

He was silent all the way to the lift, brooding. Gwen was dead. He wondered how it happened, how old she'd been. How Rhys had taken it, if their child had known their mother for long. He supposed he'd find out as soon as he got access to her files.

Jack's voice greeted them once again as they rode the lift down.

“Why does it have his voice?” Ianto asked, looking at Evans from the corner of his eye.

She sighed. “Apparently, he insisted on it when we had a connected system installed throughout the building. Thought it would be funny or something. His humor is...strange to me. It's more cheeky than any AI I've ever seen. Annoying as hell.”

“Sounds like him…” Ianto said quietly, a small smile on his face. He wondered where Jack had gone, thought about him in some Space Bar two-thousand light years away, thought about how he had run Torchwood without him and Gwen. Then something occurred to him, hitting him in the gut with the force of a train wreck.

“Oh, god…” He said, horrified.

“What?”

“Jack thinks I'm dead--saw me die. He was panicking when I was choking.” Ianto groaned softly. “This is all my fault. It must have been terrible for him.”

“How is it your fault?”

Ianto gripped the railing, knuckles white. He felt awful, heart pounding with guilt. “I'm the one who went and got myself killed off, aren't I?”

She stared at him. “He was your boss. It was his duty to take care of his team members.”

He looked at her in disbelief. Who was she to blame him so easily? “He couldn't have control over every single little thing! God, he probably blamed himself, too…” He put a hand to his eyes, scrubbing at them in frustration.

The lift dinged and the doors opened; Ianto's eyes flew to the wave of voices and commotion from beyond the opening and he shook himself out of his spiraling feelings of despair.

They stepped out into a wide room resembling a cross between a hotel lobby and a bank; people in various ranges of outfits--from suits to casual, dark clothing to heavy gear with multitudes of pockets--were going about their business, checking in and out through security detectors and entering sets of lifts. It was far more staffed than Torchwood Cardiff had ever been, and possibly even busier than Torchwood One had ever been.

“This _really_ isn’t Jack’s style…” He muttered.

“Oh?” Evans asked, walking through the crowd. Ianto noticed that people parted for her quickly when they looked up from where they were going. “I heard this lobby was modeled after the one the Time Agency he worked for had.”

“But...there are so many people. Jack always kept a small team.”

“That was the case, yes, twenty-or-so years ago; in fact,” she lowered her voice, seemingly unintentionally, “Smith was one of them.”

“She was?”

“I think it had to do with her ancestors. Great great grandparents? I don’t know for sure. Apparently, Jack was close with them.”

“What were their names?”

“Martha and Mickey Jones-Smith.”

Ianto’s eyes widened. “Oh my--that was Martha’s great...great great-granddaughter?” He twisted around, looking back towards the lift as though he could still see her.

Evans shrugged. “Torchwood runs in people’s blood.” 

She wasn’t wrong. Martha and Mickey (from what he’d read from their files) had both been amazing people. He supposed he shouldn’t be so surprised that their offspring ended up doing great things as well.

They stepped through a scanner, Evans passing her arm over a device that looked like the ones in underground train stations to get it to let them through.

“Why did Torchwood expand?” He asked.

“Space travel. When humanity starts branching out and opening up to interplanetary affairs, you’ve got ten times the aliens to deal with--and that means ten times the staff. Isabelle helped Jack design this building when the world’s need for Torchwood grew. I can’t tell you firsthand about what it was like before now.”

As she spoke, Ianto focused on the people coming and going around them, and realized that not all of them had human features. One figure, entering through a pair of automatic doors at the entrance they were heading towards, had a pair of pincers around his mouth, like a scorpion. He tried not to stare for too long.

“From what I understand, aliens were a part of Cardiff a hundred years before I was born.” She glanced at him. “You probably have some idea, though, right?”

“Yeah, well, we mostly got the drifters.”

They exited through the doors, coming out into the Plass. Ianto gazed around the fish-shaped area, bathed in orange light from the sun, which was beginning to set. Straight ahead was the round edge of the fountain, which stood a couple yards from the entrance to the building. He looked at the Millenium Centre’s bronze exterior, gleaming in the sunset, and sighed. 

He was glad to see the Plass restored to how it looked before the explosion, even despite the new building that now obstructed part of the pavement. This may be Cardiff 125 years into the future, but here, in this space--in his heart--it was still Cardiff, and he realized how much he’d missed the Hub and her surroundings in the week they’d been hiding from Unit. 

Ianto felt as though he’d not had a break in forever, and looking back--the Good Thinking virus that overran Cardiff, the ATMOS crisis that overran Britain, the 456 ordeal that overran the world--and now all of this? One thing after another, in quick succession. He really hadn’t gotten a break.

He was so tired. If Torchwood hadn’t been wearing him down before, well, wasn't this just the cherry on top of the pie of getting pounded in the ass by your own job at a secret organization?

“Come on,” Evans said, breaking his thoughts and disrupting the smile his lips were starting to curl into. She headed towards the street, activating her tablet and swiping commands into it. As they approached the road, a vehicle slid into place before them, a gush of air ruffling Ianto’s hair when it stopped. His jaw dropped.

“Is this a hovercar?” He asked enthusiastically. Evans gave him a look at his tone and he quelled his excitement, somewhat sheepishly.

“Yes?” Her answer was muffled by a loud whooshing noise as half of the exterior of the car popped out of its frame and extended upwards into the air, the hinges of the door connected at the top rather than the side. Ianto tried his best not to geek out and make himself sound like a complete twat as he wasted no time in clambering inside. He could feel the exasperation radiating off of Evans as she followed.

There was no driver, no steering wheel, just two benches of padded seating that sat facing each other.

“A literal horseless carriage,” he said.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Never mind.”

When Evans was seated across from him, she placed a finger on the window beside her, which displayed settings across the glass, and the door eased back into place. He watched as yet another holographic interface projected in front of her, allowing her to type their intended destination into the system. The car rocked back and forth slightly as its jets propelled them forward and set into a smooth glide.

They spent the ride in silence, Ianto staring out at a landscape of buildings, familiarly unfamiliar, whipping past. Every once in a while he’d spot an alien, whether hovering near an ATM or standing in line at a food vendor or getting into a hovercar. He wondered how long it’d taken for Cardiff citizens to acclimate to aliens wandering the streets.

They got out at a curb before a flat building, Ianto letting Evans lead him through a lift to the top floor. She stopped outside of room 408, which had a black door with what he'd come to recognize as a handprint scan beside it.

“I'm going to code your prints to it,” she said, placing her own palm over it before choosing a set of commands. “Put your hand here and wait for the light to pass over it.”

He did so, placing his palm gingerly over the cool glass, and a blue glow passed from top to bottom, silhouetting his fingers. It flashed green when it had finished, and he removed his hand. The door slid open.

The flat they came into had already been furnished (quite nicely, he noticed. Probably an apology for jostling him into another time period); a tv, a high-tech kitchen, a window on the back wall. The sun had set, and as he walked towards the window, he saw that it had a wonderful view of the city, an expanse of pinprick lights like fireflies surrounding the area.

“I'll be back tomorrow. Try to make a decision tonight about whether or not you want to continue working with us.” Continue his life. They hadn't left him much of a choice--he may be frustratingly self-sacrificing at times, as Jack had once called him when he tried to step in front of a bullet (momentarily forgetting Jack’s indestructibility), but he wasn't _suicidal_. 

At least, not anymore. 

Those had been difficult nights, but it had been a long time since Lisa, and he’d avoided trips to the countryside as often as possible after the cannibals.

He nodded quietly. “Thanks.”

The silence of the empty apartment was a godsend. He stood for a long while just staring out of the window, glued to one spot, watching the puzzling flicks of light that whizzed back and forth between the skyscrapers, some escaping the city and heading up into the sky. He tried to look closer, nearly pressing his nose up against the glass, when something very large and very fast _flashed_ past his window.

Ianto screamed and jumped back, tripping on the coffee table and landing flat on his ass. He groaned, pushing himself up onto the couch. He rubbed his bruised skin, feeling the nanogenes buzz around the offended area. 

“If this apartment is bugged I swear to god I’m letting them deactivate me tomorrow…” He said loudly, to himself. Or to the cameras they’d probably hidden all over this flat. Who knew. Maybe he was just being paranoid.

He went back to the window, straining to see what had gone past. Whatever it was came into view, looping back the way it had come, and he got a good look. It seemed to be some sort of spaceship--although, he supposed it would be more accurate to classify something so small as a shuttle or a cruiser.

“Oh, that is so fucking cool.” 

He stared as it did loops in the air. So _that’s_ what he had seen buzzing about the skyscrapers. He really didn't know why he was so surprised, after the hovercar. The future was taking a while to set in.

A massive yawn escaped him, and he decided it was best to figure out where the bed was. He shuffled through the flat, finding the bedroom through the second door he checked. To his delight, it was a queen-sized bed, covered with a deep maroon duvet. He didn’t even bother checking for clothes in the sleek dressers as a wave of exhaustion hit him from nowhere; he just shed his shirt and trousers and climbed between the charcoal-coloured sheets, passing out barely a minute later.


	3. Encounter

Ianto was _this_ close to murdering his entire kitchen.

To start off, the stovetop seemed to think it knew better than him what temperature was fit to prepare the eggs he'd found in the refrigerator. Ianto _knew_ how to make an omelet, and the temperature adjusting back to factory setting every time he set it higher? Not helpful.

Then there was the coffee machine.

All he wanted was a simple coffee, maybe some sugar and milk, but by the time he'd found the button for the _amount_ of coffee (hidden behind twenty other settings, including asking him to input the current time and date), he'd given up on everything else--life included. If it had been just a simple espresso machine, he knew he'd have finessed the hell out of it a half hour ago. But no, he had to get the one that, when you asked for a cup of coffee, responded as though you were a Windows user attempting to connect to an Apple device.

When it finally sputtered out his singular cup of black coffee, he was frustrated enough that only a knock at the door prevented his temptation to pour the cup over the whole damned machine from manifesting.

He tried to school his face as far from a glower as emotionally possible and opened the door to Evans’ passive expression, noticing she looked as clean-pressed and professional as yesterday (the only thing having changed about her being the color of her pantsuit). He sidestepped to let her through, moving evenly to prevent the coffee in his hand from spilling, and became suddenly aware of the stripy bathrobe he was wearing (which he'd found folded neatly in the bathroom that morning after he showered).

Evans took a seat on a stool at the kitchen’s island, resting an arm on the countertop. “Have you given any thought to working with us?” She asked.

Ianto circled around her into the kitchen, leaning against the fridge and taking a cautious sip from his cup. He would have preferred sugar, but he swallowed against the bitterness anyway. Coffee was coffee. 

“I have.” He’d had a lot of time to think about it the night before, in the aftermath of his bolting straight up at two a.m., gasping for air and reaching out to his side for Jack, fingers plunging into empty, tangled sheets. It was the first time in months he’d had to calm down from a nightmare himself, having practically moved into the Hub over the course of the past year. 

Now, he could hardly remember what he’d dreamt about, but pieces of it still burned in his mind like white spots after the flash of a camera; he knew that at some point he’d been dying in front of Jack again while Lisa screamed in the background, everything else blurring into a mess of discomforting uncertainty.

He’d spent the next hour that night staring at the ceiling, missing Jack and regulating his breathing while he continuously ran through the situation he was in. The world outside, expressing itself through moonbeams and fading streams of neon lights from the window, had seemed so strange and unfamiliar that he had felt the weight of the changed planet Earth crushing his chest in the dark.

“And?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t have much of a choice, do I? I have no life outside of Torchwood, not anymore. Haven’t in a long time. Even if you weren’t deactivating me, where would I go?” 

There was another reason he’d accepted: sticking around Torchwood was the best way to eventually find Jack. He had no clue how long it would be before Jack returned, but when he did, Ianto would be waiting for him.

And he would have Isabelle Smith shut down for this.

“Good choice,” she said in a dramatically hushed voice. “Now that you’ve decided…” She opened her tablet. “You’ll be expected to train an hour each day, to keep your fitness up. Occasionally you’ll be given private instruction to keep you up to operation standards. I’m in charge of making sure you’re socially acclimated to your atmosphere. Using the coffee machine, for instance…” She trailed off, pointedly glancing at the monster in question, which was flashing rapidly back and forth between french vanilla and hazelnut flavoring options.

“Hey, I am very good at making coffee. This _thing_ just won’t cooperate with me.” He frowned at it.

“...Right. I’ll make sure to shoot you an instructional video--which reminds me,” she pulled her bag onto her lap, pulling out a thin, metal device that matched her tablet, as well as a watch and an earpiece. “These are for you.” She waved him towards her and picked up the thin metal device. “You press this button on the side to activate the interface,” she said, pressing it and handing it over when the hologram appeared. “You can code it with a retina scan or your fingerprint; it’s your choice. I’ve already set up a messaging system for you. It will be used for you to communicate your reports to me and for me to give you your assignments. If you ever have questions, like with the coffee machine, message me. Got it?”

Ianto nodded. “Yes.”

“This,” she said, holding up the watch, “Is connected to your tablet and this earpiece. When you get a call, it’ll go off and you can use it to video or direct the call to your earpiece. I’ll show you how to use it later.”

“Great,” he said, and then, a few seconds later, “What exactly is my job now? You haven’t really explained.”

“You’re Special Ops, which means we send you in on stealth missions or use you when we don’t want to make a public scene. You’ll also be sent on missions off-planet--”

“ _Off-planet_? How far off-planet?” He demanded.

“Wherever we need you.”

Ianto took an enormous sip from his cup. This was getting to be a lot to handle. He eyed the coffee. Maybe caffeine wasn’t his best choice.

“Don’t worry, you will be put through training for handling the transportation shuttles, various atmospheric conditions, et cetera.”

He laughed sharply. “Oh, that makes it fine, then,” he said sarcastically.

“Relax. It will be weeks before you get sent on unstable missions like that.”

“Weeks, huh? Loads of time to prepare, then.”

Evans rolled her eyes--the most expressive he’d seen her yet. His remarks were finally getting under her skin, eh?

“You have today to do what you want. Go out, explore, whatever. We’ve matched all of the funds you had when you died--you can pay with this chip,” she handed him a flat, shiny box, like a USB. “Wave it over the scanners.”

“No more Visa?”

“Most everyone has chips in their arms now; plastic is obsolete. We’ll get you one soon enough.”

He stared at his arm. “Doesn’t that make you vulnerable to tracking?”

“Extremely,” she said amusedly, giving him a sharp grin. “It’s useful to us.”

“You know, I used to feel like we were the good guys,” he said, tone aiming for joking but coming out a bit sadder than he intended. “At least in the long run. We protected people. I’m starting to doubt that’s the case these days.”

“Everything we do is to keep people safe. You know as well as I do that most of what you have to do to achieve that is grey.”

He hummed reluctantly. He’d done things he couldn’t even remember--whatever they were had been serious enough he’d retconned himself to keep his sanity. Maybe Smith and Evans only seemed extreme because he didn’t have hands on the wheel anymore.

“So,” she said, sliding gracefully from the stool and grabbing her bag. “I suspect Smith will have a mission ready for you tomorrow. She likes to start people off as early as possible--and you’ve got the experience anyway. If you need anything, you know how to contact me.”

“Right. Thanks.”

And she was gone.

Ianto looked down at the chip in his hand, sighed, and glanced at the fridge. He did need groceries (and something to drink if he was being honest). They didn’t leave him much in the way of clothes, either; just another version of the outfit he’d arrived in, plus a coat. He needed to get a couple of suits. Time changing didn’t alter his desire to maintain a professional appearance when he went to the Torchwood Tower.

He changed into a shirt and trousers and slid the coat on (there was no way he was going out dressed in a skin-tight exercise shirt, sexy as he knew it made him look), slipping the chip into his pocket.

He made it through his shopping without incident; the shop offered to deliver his groceries by drone--which, apparently, was commonplace now. He hesitantly accepted just to see how it went; this was Cardiff, after all--what if someone attacked the drone to steal the groceries (or for a kick)? He expressed these concerns to the shopkeep, who assured him that rarely happened, but was reluctant to give Ianto a statistical percentage to back that claim.

It was strange to see aliens walking about the streets, dressed in clothes that ranged from mundanely human to foreign and otherworldly. This wasn’t because he was unused to aliens, more that he was surprised to see everyone else so used to them. He saw plenty of human-alien couples walking down the street hand-in-hand, out for lunch, getting into cars together. It was nice, he thought. For him, it was like seeing the most fascinating part of his job at Torchwood incorporated into people's’ daily lives.

After he’d finished with the shopping, he wanted nothing more than lunch and a drink. He wondered if his old local was still open, but decided not to check. He’d stopped going there after what happened with Mandy. Too many strong memories associated with that place; going there just reminded him of the night after he’d lost Lisa, and Mandy rushing into his flat to stop him killing himself, and how he’d left Jack to die on that strange planet while she watched. 

No, Mandy’s betrayal had ruined that place for him.

He walked the streets, searching for a decent-looking pub. He stumbled across one that looked fairly new, (less than a hundred years old, at least), and settled with it.

The wooden doors were brightly polished and swung open easily. He noted that they were the first set of doors he'd encountered that weren't automatic--the owners must have been trying for a more authentic aesthetic. They managed it fairly well; the interior of the pub would have looked like a common 21st-century pub, if not for the many aliens inhabiting the tables and barstools and the odd, brightly-colored bottles of alcohol lining the shelves behind the bar.

Ianto slid into an empty seat at the bar, surreptitiously eyeing the Blowfish seated on the adjacent stool. When the bartender asked after him, he ordered a beer and some chips. Normally, he would have eaten more, however, despite it being around one in the afternoon, he wasn't all that hungry. He wondered briefly if that was a side effect of the nanogenes: being able to eat, but not needing to eat a lot to survive.

He'd have to test it out.

He was halfway through the chips when the Blowfish, who had earlier purchased an entire bottle of a blindingly neon green liquid, stood, stumbling noisily and sloshing the stuff onto the counter near Ianto's elbow. Ianto shifted his arm, a bit ruffled, glad for him to be leaving as he'd been extremely loud and tended to dribble the stuff all over himself when he drank.

He shoved another chip into his mouth, squinting to read the labels on the bottles lining the shelves. Most weren't in English--or any Terran language, for that matter.

As he took a pull from his bottle there was a movement beside him: someone sliding onto the recently vacated stool.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink, but it seems like your mouth is,” there was an all-too-familiar chuckle, “otherwise occupied...”

Ianto choked on his beer. He struggled to quit coughing and whirled around.

“ _Jack?!_ ” He cried in shock, a bit hoarse.

There he was, leaning seductively on the counter, face smug and inviting as ever. Ianto's eyes swept over his outfit. The coat was gone, he realized with surprise (and a bit of disappointment), in its place was a many-layered outfit of white and sandy yellow, completely uncharacteristic and to Jack’s usual dark attire.

Jack's face was contorting into a confused look, eyebrows furrowing. He cocked his head slightly, his entire stance like a bewildered puppy.

“Who?”

Ianto straightened slightly. What did he mean, who? There was no way this was anyone other than Jack, he'd swear by it.

“Sorry you, uh,” he stared analytically into Jack’s eyes, trying to detect anything out of the ordinary, “you look like someone I know.”

Not-Jack leaned back a bit, confusion fading away as though it had never happened. “He must be very good-looking, then.” He flashed a smile that managed to be equally charming and obnoxious.

Ianto decided to play along--he didn't want to scare this man away without answers. He relaxed his posture and smiled. “Almost as good-looking as you,” he said. “What _is_ your name?”

“Javic Piotr Thane,” he recited confidentiality, his middle name rolling off of his tongue.

_Oh._

Ianto stared. Jack had mentioned that name only once to him, in hushed, sleepy tones, quite a while ago. He'd been trying to talk Ianto back to sleep after a nightmare, hands carding through his hair, inhibition loosened enough by the late hours that he wasn't so guarded with his past for once.

He was right, this _was_ Jack--far earlier in his timeline than Ianto had ever expected to see.

“And you? There's gotta be a lovely name to match that face.”

Ianto hesitated. If he gave Javic his actual name, he might seriously fuck up the future; his whole relationship with Jack, the circumstances of their first meeting--that could all change. If he had retcon on him, he might be a bit looser, but…

“James,” he said, blurting out the first name that came to mind. “James...Williams.”

“Well, James Williams, it's _very_ nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Javic took a sip of the drink he'd brought with him, making eye contact as he drank. God, Ianto knew what he was trying to do and, as much as he missed Jack, he seriously doubted it was a good idea.

This wasn't his Jack, anyway. Part of him was disappointed; he'd felt hope when he’d first seen Javic’s face, that he wouldn't have to wait so long to find him again after all, but...Javic couldn't help him with that.

“Are you new to Cardiff?” Ianto asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I'm taking...a bit of a vacation from my job.” There was a mischievous tint to his grin.

“Oh? Where do you work?” Ianto asked, knowing full well what the answer was and wanting to see how he handled the question anyway.

Javic lowered his voice, “I'm a Time Agent.”

“Wow, really?” Ianto said, feigning amazement.

“Yeah. It's tricky,” he said conversationally, and Ianto got the feeling he was trying to impress him, “you've always gotta be careful you don't screw up the timestream, or leave anything behind, or run into yourself; though,” he laughed, “I don't know what business my future self would have in Cardiff, of all places.”

Ianto smiled. If only he knew.

This version of Jack seemed, well...he was so _young_. Maybe not in appearance, but you could hear it in his voice. All of the hard edges and heaviness in Jack’s voice, what Ianto was used to, were nonexistent in Javic’s immature tone. It was interesting to see a side of Jack apart from all of the growth he'd undergone in his 200 years of immortality.

“It grows on you,” he said softly, still smiling.

He realized, with a mental start, that Javic was around his own age. Would Ianto have fallen in love with him like this? He couldn't be sure, but in his heart, he felt that a part of him would always be drawn to Jack, whatever universe or time they found themselves in.

After all, he was still alive, wasn’t he?

Javic gave him a contemplative look and slowly lifted his glass to his lips. “Is that so…”

That’s when his wrist strap went off, blaring like a fire alarm; Javic jerked and some of the amber liquid in his glass jumped onto his hand. He set the glass down quickly.

“ _Damn_ ,” he said under his breath in a frustrated tone, hitting at the device until it shut up. “And I was having such a good time,” he glanced up at Ianto, and looked over his shoulder, scanning all of the exits. “I’m sorry, Mister Williams; I’d love to get to know those beautiful eyes a little better but I’m afraid I’ve gotta run. It’s urgent,” he looked back at the exit in a manner that bordered on paranoid. He gave Ianto one last grin before slipping off of the stool and disappearing out the exit.

Well, that was typical Jack, wasn’t it?

The doors at the front of the pub burst open, drawing Ianto’s attention from staring after Javic. A man and woman entered, both out of breath and checking their wrists, glancing up to scan the pub. As they moved closer, he saw the vortex manipulators on their wrists. Interesting.

They swept the pub before one motioned to the other and they ran out the back door.

Ianto blinked, looked down at his nearly finished beer, and made a quick decision.

He hurried out of the door, glaring in the contrast from dark pub interior to sunny streets, just in time to see the coattails of one of the Time Agents disappearing around the corner.

He crept along the wall, holding his breath, and listened intently.

“Damn it! We’ve lost him again. Where is it this time?”

“Hm...1872, America. The “Wild West,” I believe it’s referred to as?”

“Wasn’t that the, er, what were they called? Those men with the guns and the horses.”

“Cowboys?”

“Oh, yes. Why am I not surprised…”

Ianto heard a fizzling noise and saw a flash against the adjacent wall. Cautiously, he stuck his head around the corner. The alleyway was scattered with bits of trash from a nearby bin that looked as though they’d been scattered about by the wind. The agents were gone.

It took a couple of seconds to process what had just happened. He stared at the wall in front of him in a daze before dissolving into laughter, partly at the idea of Jack in a cowboy hat that had unavoidably popped into his head, and partly at the bizarreness of everything that had just occurred. He was _definitely_ going to hound Jack about this. When he saw him again, that was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I've been writing this fic for about a year now, and although I have 60 pages, I have no idea when it will be finished or when the final update will be.
> 
> Ianto Jones playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4K2l22DH5H7UCypilTX66S
> 
> tumblr: lesbinova


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